Communication network systems are commonly deployed over a wide geographic area. Femtocells may be deployed to provide licensed spectrum cellular systems within tightly constrained geographic areas. Femtocells normally cover a space as small as a room within a building, a small home and/or a business location. Femtocells are typically designed to provide service areas of 100-1000 square meters, while macrocells normally cover areas on the order of 10-100 square kilometers, and microcells cover 1-10 square kilometers, and picocells cover 10,000-100,000 square meters.
Femtocell network deployments are not significantly structured or preplanned. Rather, these networks often comprise a plurality of ad-hoc femtocell deployments. The simple femtocell configuration allows the femtocell networks to adapt to meet the requirements of many different deployment environments. For example, some networks might scale to one million femtocells, any of which might enter or leave the network at any time.
Communication signaling between mobile stations (MSs) and femtocell access point (FAPs) may include various techniques to ensure the MS is properly registered with the femtocell and is in communication with an appropriate FAP. Neighbor cells and clusters may be used to organize a femtocell communication environment. Registering a MS with a femtocell cluster of FAPs may require pre-planning and neighbor list sharing to ensure optimized network communications.